Very rarely have I read a book that I hate so much as to wish for its pages to combust in my hands. Where I loathe most of its characters, and just looking at the cover makes me feel sick.
'Opal Plumstead' is one of, if not the worst children's book I have ever read. It is the most misogynistic book about the suffragettes I have ever read, and for a story aimed at young audiences, this is not only uncomprehendingly disrespectful, but dangerous. It doesn't drop the ball on feminism, it drops the nuke. Its messages are shit, its characters are shit, and its romance is such subterranean sewage-level shit that makes most YA couplings look believable. It's beyond offensive, and I'm at a loss as to why it has loads of positive reviews.
I hate 'Opal Plumstead' so much that I will never, ever read another book by Jacqueline Wilson. It really did not seem like she knew what she was doing with a novel containing this subject matter; like she was out of her depth, but not with historical fiction, since I've enjoyed her 'Hetty Feather' series. 'Opal' is where I draw the line, and declare myself done with this author for good. It is that bad.
Now to explain why. Abandon all hope ye who enter here:
Opal herself and Mrs Roberts - suffragette and the owner of the sweet factory where Opal ends up working in - are literally the only halfway decent female characters in the entire 520-page book. All of the other women and girls are either bitchy, mean, nasty, fat, ugly, old, stereotypically fundamentalist and conservative, greedy, flighty, shallow, stupid, or all of the above.
Fourteen-year-old Opal has a school friend at the beginning, Olivia, who we are clearly meant to think is fat, greedy and stupid with her sweets and talk of wanting babies and a husband one day; compared to the smart, thin and bespectacled Opal, who doesn't want to marry (yeah, that'll soon change, obviously, because females never mean what they say and they always change their minds, amirite? Fuck you, 'Opal Plumstead'). Then when Opal's family is in disgrace, Olivia's mother bans the two girls from meeting, and they really never ever see each other again. Olivia is officially out of the story.
So much for female friendships.
Opal's older sister Cassie is pretty, fashionable and flirty, and their mother rubs it in Opal's face constantly that Cassie is her favourite (oh, we'll get to the mother later). Cassie runs off with a much older man later on and has a baby with him (a boy, what else?), and everything about that development is fine in the end - Cassie's happy and rich and fulfilled. After running away with a married man more than twice her age and bringing further disgrace to the Plumsteads. Her mother placates because babies! What a great message to send to young girls reading this!
Opal's former schoolteacher, Miss Mountbank, is described as ugly, and is horrible to her always, despite her being a smart, well-behaved student. Mountbank thinks Opal is a showoff.
I swear, all females bar one or two hate our poor young heroine for no real reason and exist to make her life miserable every chance they get. All of the girls working at the sweet factory, Fairy Glen, treat Opal worse than bullies would - they hate her for no reason; they torture and shame her at every opportunity. The only workers at the factory who treat her like a human being are men.
The only people in 'Opal' who give the heroine any chance are men, aside from Mrs Roberts. All men are angels (even the sexual predators), and women are demons to be conquered. Make of that what you will. All girls live to gang up on the weak, after all (Cassie says something to this effect); all girls are shallow, predatory, evil bitches. Best to hang out with menfolk. Even men who sexually harass their female employees and patronize them all the time. These actual predators get off scot-free.
The internalized misogyny and condoning of powerful men's behaviour in 'Opal' is sickening to the core. And the suffragette movement is meant to be one of the main themes - whenever it bothers to even show up, that is. It's like an afterthought. I wouldn't be surprised if it was. Again I'll get more into that later.
Opal is stalked by an arsehole, Freddy, who also works at Fairy Glen. She forgives and excuses him for everything, of course, and the narrative doesn't challenge this. 'Opal' barely avoids a love triangle by letting that ship sail before Opal meets her main love-at-first-sight love interest, Mrs Roberts's son, Morgan. Yes, the story is as trite and predictable as it sounds.
To go reluctantly back to Freddy, he can go straight to hell with all his male-entitlement issues, stalking, and nonstop declarations of love to Opal in front of people they know despite her continuously telling him to piss off. Freddy is as creepy as a John Hughes hero. He then gets over her and finds another young female victim to harass. They're still "friends", though, and Opal genuinely sees him as a good boy. A "sweet lad" (fucking gag me). Mother dearest, no surprise, likes Freddy immediately more than her own "plain" daughter upon meeting him unannounced at their doorstep. Another fantastic message to send to girls nowadays.
Oh, but I've avoided talking about this character for long enough: Opal's mother.
Before I begin, I'll say that before 'Opal', I gave Ms Wilson the benefit of the doubt and assumed that her bias against fat women is unconscious. In practically all of her books, the fat women and girls featured have either been stupid, greedy, disgusting, the butt of mean jokes, shy and pathetic even for her usual protagonists, typical mean bullies, irredeemable antagonists, or most of the above. Not a good look for a Children's Laureate, as if the girls reading her books won't be self-conscious and depressed enough.
But after 'Opal', the only explanation I can think of for its portrayal of females who aren't thin is that Ms Wilson truly hates them.
Case and point: Mrs Louisa Plumstead.
Mrs Plumstead is evil incarnate, plain and simple. Literally all she cares about is social status and looking good to her neighbours. A desperate delusion since she's as poor as dirt and so is her neighbourhood. She treats Opal like absolute shit and lavishes praise on her prettier, brainless socialite daughter Cassie. She only treats her husband with the barest minimum of humanity when he's making them money. She didn't work before her husband was arrested because she believes that no respectable woman should once she's married and has children. She calls suffragettes "man-hating harridans", and silly and hysterical. She insists that men know best. She forces fourteen-year-old Opal to give up her scholarship for further education to work in the sweet factory - to support the family, but Mummy Dearest never liked the idea of women having an education, so I'm sure this is more of her scheming.
Mother whines and moans constantly, determined that others, but especially Opal, are made to feel sorry for her. She guilt-trips and emotionally (and physically) abuses Opal whenever she pleases (she does hit Opal, saying she deserves it, and is never sorry in the slightest). All the while she makes everything about her and her woe-is-me pain. A pain and suffering which she in part was responsible for, as she was always pressuring her poor, loving husband to get his book published and earn them money, driving him to embezzlement, leading to his arrest and the resulting family disgrace. The book goes so far as to suggest, in Cassie's words, "He should have stood up to Mother more, been a little more manly. That's the way to please a woman" (page 251).
The subtext seems to be that fat, older women are hags who harass their poor male spouses and stifle their creativity (because women don't create, only destroy, amirite?), and are to blame whenever men get into any kind of trouble. Men are the real victims! And Opal favours and has only fond memories of her kind, doting father.
Your feminist suffragette book for kids, everybody!
Jacqueline Wilson's portrayal of mothers in her books has never been positive, to put it nicely. I can only think of a few who are even decent - 'The Butterfly Club', 'Bad Girls', 'Cliffhanger', and 'Hetty Feather' (
I mean, I understand: motherhood is a challenge weighing the atlas. It is one of the most difficult, physically, emotionally and mentally-draining, and disgracefully unappreciated jobs in the world, and not everyone is fit for it.
But bloody hell, can Jacqueline Wilson books go too far. Disturbingly so, when an abusive mother is not viewed as a villain, but as "Oh, that darn mum! That's just how she is. Never mind her."
Never has this been more apparent than with Mrs Plumstead. Nearly every sentence out of her mouth is an insult to Opal. Here are only a few of her wonderful lines towards her own daughter:
"You're telling me that Mrs Roberts's son, the one who will inherit the factory, is interested in you?" - page 412
"Opal, you're making my head spin. You can be so aggravating at times. Why can't you be more like your sister?" - page 293
'"You're the most intolerably selfish girl. What sort of a daughter are you? If only Cassie could stay home on Saturday."
"Well, she doesn't make much effort to be here on Sundays, either, does she," I said.
"Yes, because she's out with her young man. I dare say that's why you're being so sulky, because your young man didn't come to anything."' - page 312
'"And where are you off to, missy? Mixing with those dreadful suffragettes again? You're going to get yourself into terrible trouble. All decent folk think those women want horse-whipping. The destruction they've caused! [...] [After Opal explains how they've been tortured and even killed] They bring it on themselves with their silly hysterics."
"They're hysterical on our behalf, Mother. They want better rights for women. Once we have the vote, then everything will change."
"I wouldn't vote if you paid me. Women have no business in the polling booths. We know nothing about politics or running the wretched country."' - page 356-357
'"Why must you always be so quick to make up your mind to condemn people?" I said, losing my temper. "You were the same with poor Father when he first got arrested."
"Hold your tongue," snapped Mother. "I won't have it! Oh dear Lord, what have I done to deserve a family like this? A husband who ends up in prison, a daughter who willfully throws herself on a married man, and another child who criticizes me endlessly and shows me no respect whatsoever."
She puts her hands to her head, clutching it desperately.' - page 391
If you haven't felt like wanting to kill Mrs Plumstead now, then you're a better person than I am.
The nerve, the hypocrisy, the self-absorption, the self-delusion. The abuse is plain as day. Opal's own mother loathes her just for existing. What a hate-filled creature, and I don't care that women like her existed in the early 20th century (and still do, to my utter dismay).
But if you're still not convinced that this matriarch hates her plain bookworm daughter with a fiery, demonic passion, here is the following line, said after Opal's father is put in jail. This line is so awful that I actually had to put the book down for a while to recover my bearings:
'"You think yourself so superior, Opal Plumstead. Your very name's a total foolishness, just because your father said your eyes flashed blue and green like an opal. [...] If I'd had my way you'd have been plain Jane - and a plain Jane you are, with your pinched face and hair as straight as a poker. How you're so full of yourself when you look such a fright I don't know at all."
I was shaking from head to toe as she spoke the words. I knew that Mother had always found me difficult, but did she actually detest me?' - page 102-103
Yes, she does.
There's no other way of interpreting it. The author cannot seriously expect us to like or feel sorry for this banshee/Dementor after that, surely? For children's and YA lit, it's horrific and unreadable. Triggering, even.
Mrs Plumstead possesses no heart, and even for a typical strained mother-and-daughter relationship in a Jacqueline Wilson book, it's over the top - the top of the fucking pedestal of the limits of the universe.
And that's only part of the internalized misogyny in 'Opal Plumstead'. The portrayal of the suffragettes isn't much better.
For example, in chapter 25 Opal speaks at a suffragette meeting, criticising their efforts of using force and vandalism to get public attention. Like, why so violent and angry, yo? Instead of educating her and explaining that the suffragettes have been using peaceful, passive means to try to win the vote for over a hundred years, to no avail and progress, with the men in power willfully ignoring them at every turn, the women at the meeting merely glare and scold the naïve fourteen-year-old. Not a good, respectful look for them. Even Mrs Roberts doesn't bother to help her out.
Speaking of, Mrs Roberts - we never learn of her first name, only her married surname - your feminist suffragettes book, everyone! - doesn't treat Opal like a person worthy of proper respect once the girl starts going out with her son, Morgan. She disapproves, because of the Plumsteads' disgrace. Opal is "not the right type of girl". Mrs Roberts still sticks to society's rules; which is hypocritical of her, when her entire goal in life is to change society and see to it that all women are treated with respect, regardless of class and background.
Which comes to nothing during WW1, when her son is killed and she shuts down Fairy Glen, too exhausted and grief-stricken to do anything anymore. Not another word is mentioned about the suffragette movement. It goes absolutely nowhere. It might as well not have been a feature in 'Opal'.
What utter horseshit.
So much for Mrs Roberts being Opal's sole female supporter and needed mother figure in the whole wretched book. She ends up being as antagonistic as everyone else who possesses a vagina ('Opal' is cis-normative, heteronormative, and whitewashed as fuck, too. That it's children's historical fiction is no excuse; it's abysmal rep, for a book about feminist history published in 2014).
Instead, the stupid story focuses on what's truly important: Opal's love life. Her relationship with Morgan, once she meets him in page 396, is so insta-lovey, so sappy, so twee, so treacly, so harlequin romance, so fairy tale rainbow shit, that I'd almost prefer reading more of Mrs Plumstead's daily barrage and abuse hurled at Opal. It's ridiculous, especially after Opal had spent the rest of the book vowing never to fall in love. We know what that means though, don't we?
Feminism!!!!
Literally on the day they meet, within a few minutes of knowing each other, Opal and Morgan walk together in his gardens, and she tells him everything about herself. She just met him.
When she says she's never having babies because she'll never marry, he says:
"I thought all girls wanted to get married and have children [...] Not that I really know any girls - just cousins, and sisters of chaps at school. They all seem like identical dolls, very pretty but rather terrifying, with blank china faces and staring glass eyes. But you're not like a doll at all, Opal. You're the most real girl I've ever met. We can talk properly, and you've got stuff to say too. You don't giggle or try to flirt." - page 406
Fuck my life.
Are you serious right now?
The above line sums up practically everything wrong with this so-called feminist book about the suffragettes. Let's see: In the space of a breath, the male love interest makes generalizations about girls and what they want (when he'd just admitted to not knowing many), compares them to indistinguishable blank dolls with no substance, slut shames them, refers to them as brainless, superficial bimbos without having to say those exact words, and to top it off, he goes all "You're not like other girls" on our leading female.
Oh she's read a book - BOOM! she's the one for him! And he's the son of the head of the local suffragette movement!
Remember: This was published in 2014.
Opal pours her heart out to this shithead, and when she laments that she's never been anyone's favourite (in case you couldn't tell by now, she's a Woobie of the highest order), he replies, "Well, you're my favourite girl,". THEY. JUST. MET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Morgan is about eighteen, as well, and Opal is still fourteen. He's rich and buys her crap. He takes her on expensive trips. When they've just met. See, young girls reading 'Opal Plumstead': that's what true love looks like!
And people give 'Twilight' a hard time.
I won't bother describing the sickeningly-sweet romancing of this pair any longer. I'll leave off by saying that the confused mess of the novel ends with Morgan going to war and dying - the narrative so desperately wants you to care, but I don't; if I cared any less I'd be in a coma - and Opal going to art school, where she makes a new male friend. Not any female friends, because fuck womenfolk.
Votes for women!
I'm done with 'Opal'. What a misguided, tone deaf, vulgar, infuriating, offensive, plot-less, structure-less, meandering, and shamefully misogynistic lump of garbage. 'Opal Plumstead' is proof that some books deserve to burn. It's worse than a bad book; it's an evil book. I wouldn't wish it on anyone, much less my worst enemy.
I never, EVER want to think about it again. Fuck this book. I'm out.
Final Score: 0/5
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